Dr. Hall Harris: One of the
important
things that
you also need to remember in this regard is the idea of the formation
of the canon of the New Testament, that is which books belong in our
Bible are related to this process. Many people have the idea that the
early church decided what was in the canon or wasn't, but there is a
very significant, different way to look at what constitutes canon or
the books that should be in the Bible. That is that the early church
didn't really decide. The early church simply recognized the books that
they already felt belonged, so they didn't create it, they rather just
acknowledged it. But that's a key difference in this discussion.

Dr. Darrell Bock: And it is
important to
recognize that in this recognition process that we are talking about,
we're talking about a process that took time because it was engaged in
very carefully, very thoughtfully.

There were some books in some lists that didn't end up being in the
final listing, that kind of thing. And there was this concern to be
sure that texts were old, that they had this "rootage" that we talked
about, this traditional "rootage," and that they reflected the
theology, the core theology of the church, which these Gnostic texts
and missing gospels really don't reflect, even a text like the Gospel of Thomas,
which is probably the most well-publicized of these missing
gospels. It is an interesting text. It is 114 sayings supposedly coming
from Jesus, and if you read through the Gospel of Thomas
for your
devotions or just on the side you will find that about 25 percent of it
sounds very familiar because it is very much like Matthew, Mark, Luke,
or John. Another 25 percent of it is sort of like Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John. And another 50 percent of it you read and you think, "I've
never seen or heard that before!" because it is not at all like
Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

Dr. Daniel Wallace: And that
50% you think, "What in the world did he just say?"

Darrell: That's exactly right in
some
cases. So it really is a mixed bag. Well Thomas is a gospel that
clearly has some of its origin in the traditions of the church, some of
which showed up in our gospels. It is also clear that some of it
doesn't come from there. I think in the end that's one of the reasons
why it didn't make it. In fact, we have statements from Origen in the
early third century. He talks about what gospels we don't read in the
churches because they are not recognized. Interestingly enough, he
mentions Thomas by name.

Mark: Don't you think that's
an
important piece of this discussion? Because if we all have friends and
neighbors and family members who join this discussion, missing gospels,
the very implication is that something has been lost, that there is an
incomplete set. That's why, Hall, I am glad you brought that up. It is
a discussion of canonicity: why we have what we have. The gospels that
we do have are complete, and there is nothing missing. In other words,
what you are arguing for, if I can phrase it this way, is that the
early church knew exactly what it was. They assessed it. They looked at
it, and they put it aside. Is that fair?

Darrell: Yeah, I think so. I think
that
very much is the sense you get. There were some works that ended up in
the collection known as the Apostolic Fathers: Shepherd of Hermas,
Didache, First Clement, that
they read and they said, "This is
Orthodox. There is no doubt about that. This is a reflection of our
theology." But its "rootage" wasn't such that it was close enough to
this emerging period of the origins of Christianity that it was
included.

So you had some works like that. Then you had other works that clearly
didn't even fit theologically. You go to plug it in, and it's like
using a Phillips screwdriver on a normal screw. It isn't going to turn
anything.

Mark: And what you are
saying about a
lot of these books, a lot of these writings, is that there are pieces
that do fit that sound very familiar to us. Then there are other
extremes that it's way out there. It's not even close.

Dan: If I could add, I think
basically what we are looking at here for the ancient tests of
canonicity are three things. First was "antiquity". Was it something
that was written by the Apostles or associates of the Apostles? It had
to be a first century document.

Mark:
Right.

Dan:
And so when you said these other gospels were set aside, well that
could only be true after these other gospels were written.

Mark:
Right.

Dan:
And that would mean, once we are
getting into the second century, some of them were not written until
the ninth century, so some of them were really late on the scene. But
that is the first test of canonicity: apostolicity or antiquity.

The second is catholicity. Was it something accepted widely by the
churches? This is where these Gnostic gospels simply fail the test
abysmally.

Thirdly is orthodoxy. Does it comport with the orthodoxy that we
already read in the Scriptures. So when you have got the Muratorian
Canon, which is the second-earliest canon list we have in the second
century, it talks about the Shepherd
of Hermas, and it says, "Hey, this
thing's orthodox. Go ahead and read it. Just don't read it in church
because it is of recent vintage, so it doesn't pass the test of
antiquity, even though it passed the test of orthodoxy and even
catholicity."

Darrell: In catholicity, it is
important
to explain comes from a word that means the idea of something being
universal. We are not talking about Roman Catholicism or something like
that.

Mark:
Right, right.

Darrell: It is something completely
different. So this standard is the idea that it was universal because
it reflects the theology of the entirety of the church.

Hall: I think another point,
though,
that is also worth throwing in here as a comment. That is, why all the
interest in these missing gospels suddenly? Especially in the fact that
they have been known for quite a few years in some cases, but suddenly
they are becoming very popular in the media. I think you have to deal
with the darker side of this whole picture. That is that a lot of
people love a good conspiracy theory. So the idea that somehow the
church - through its history in some form or other; whether it's the
eastern church or the Roman church or whoever, suppressed or hid or
kept under cover some of these documents so that they wouldn't
interfere with official doctrine - intrigues a lot of people. It's
like, it's very difficult for some people to get around the fact that
they just believe that somebody has been in work to monkey with this in
order to distort doctrine or preserve tradition or to serve the
interest of some group or other.

Darrell: In
fact, I think it is important
to realize that a lot of what goes on here is that there are half
truths about the history of this that get played on in a very
significant way. It is true that once we get to the fourth century and
we begin to move toward the solidification of the canon, because really
it was a process that we can trace its emergence from the end of the
second century until the point where the canon starts to be solidified
in the middle of the fourth century with Athanasius. Anyway, what
sometimes is said is, "Well the church suppressed these works. They
used their power to put them out of circulation." And that, actually,
for the fourth century is completely true. They did do that. If they
found them, these texts were burned. The reason we have Nag Hammadi is,
someone took these text, put them in a jar, hide them away so that they
would
not be found. The person who got them will know where they were and
they can get access to them.

There is some element of partial truth in some of what you hear.
Another, what you hear is, history is written by the winners. That is,
certainly, often the case. Although, every known then you get a loser
who manages to get their writing out there and good circulation. But,
sometimes winners win because they deserve to win historically. That is
historical features such not that is a fortuitous combination that
leads
them in the power or something like that but because there is a
momentum that is gerund generated sociologically by a movement that
means that it reflects the origins of what this movement was and is.

And that is the case with the Christian materials. Yes, the winners win
but the replies; winners write the history but replies sometimes those
winners deserve to win, by the way, sociology and history actually
developed.

Dan: I think, you can see
that when
you look at our New Testament Gospels compared to Gnostic gospels.
There is continuity with all testaments and how they view God as
creator and how they view God interacting with the world where you do
not have that in the Gnostic gospels. And so, if Gnosticism had one,
you have a really different kind of religion today. It does not have
continuity with the Old Testament. It does not really view God as the
same God at all.

Darrell: Right. There is a sense
which
Gnosticism is really anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic in the sense. In the
Jewish conception of God which Christianity inherited there is one
creator God, there is one supreme God that God is the God of Israel.
But in these Gnostic texts, as we already alluded to, the creation is
the project of an underling god. And some versions like the Gospel of
Judas, about which received so much attention earlier in
the year, you
are really down to the third level God.

I mean, we are talking about, if I can use a sports analogy, it is a
god that comes out of the double-A minor league.

Dan:
I knew you would.

Darrell: That is right [laughter].
It is a
minor league god who botches the job and then, God has to go about the
works, the process of recovering what has been done. In the way he does
it Gnosticism is he puts this divine sparker spirit in the people and
the only thing that lives in the redemption process is this divine
sparker spirit that is inside the people. There is no real discussion
of sin or human responsibility, very different picture from both the
Old Testament and what we see in orthodox Christianity.

The point is that when you look at the theology of this material and
compared to what we have in the New Testament, it is so distinct, often
the question is in fact, my son likes do this. He likes reproduce
discussions that he is going to have and the discussion goes like this:
"Have you heart about Jesus?" You know about the Jesus of gospels in
someone will say, "No, I do not. Will you really take a look at it?

The next response is "Yeah, but have you heart about all those gospels
that did not make it in to the Bible. What is going on with them? Do
you know they are not in the Bible?" that often becomes the
conversations stopper.

Well, simple answer is, if we look at these gospels and see what they
say, we can understand why they did not make it in. They did not fit.
They did not fit it all theologically. They fit in their view of God,
not just their view of Jesus. They did not fit in their view man, not
just their view of Jesus. There was a disconnect at several levels
which meant that when they were produced, they really never had a
chance to be considered orthodox. They really were a reconfiguration or
a revision of what Christianity was in effort to reformulate what
Christianity was. They did get some momentum in the second century but
eventually was recognized as being very fringe.

Mark: What would you say
would be the
greatest thing that the Gnostic writings teach us about Christianity? I
mean, is it just the opposite? That is what we can see, in other words,
we can see what is counter fit, if you will? What good is there that we
can gleam from reading this material?

Dan: Let me suggest something
first.
We probably all have five different opinions among the three of us. I
think one of the things that they teach us, they have a high view of
Christ in terms of his divinity in many respects. They do not have much
in views of humanity but what interesting is when you read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code it
speaks about these eighty gospels I am not sure where
he got that number from that Constantine rejected. He says he got rid
of the ones that emphasized the humanity of Christ and kept the ones
that emphasized the deity. That is just the opposite of what we really
have.

New Testament Gospels really put a strong emphasis on the humanity of
Christ. You just do not see that in this Gnostic books. You see some of
them say two of them, in fact say I saw Jesus walk in this feet did not
touch to ground. He left no footprint. You know, you got this kind of
thing one of them have some what this head in the clouds, literally in
the clouds. He is not a human Jesus but they do put emphasis on his
spirit or in the sense on his divinity, which shows that the early
church had an appreciation of the deity of Christ early on. Gnosticism
just went in one direction but not the other.

Darrell: The Apocalypse of Peter
has an
interesting text because in it Peter has a vision of the crucifixion
scene and sees a figure laughing in heaven while the crucifixion is
going on. So he asks Jesus about this. Jesus' response is, well, what
is going on is the spirit that occupied Jesus' body departed before the
crucifixion. It was actually the substitute that was crucified.
Meanwhile, Jesus was laughing in heaven because again if I can use
another sports metaphor he's faked them out.

They think they are crucifying him but, in fact, they aren't. He's in
heaven watching this pseudo-crucifixion going on. Well, it's a real
crucifixion for the substitute but it's not a crucifixion for Jesus.
And in that process we see this very different expression of what the
death of Jesus is all about and the point is that the spirit occupies a
body but we don't have a true incarnation, we don't have real human
Jesus.

And in that sense this material has Jesus be more divine than even, or
more exclusively divine a better way to say it more exclusively divine
than the way the gospels portray it. Another interesting text is in the
Gospel of Thomas
set of texts. In the Gospel
of Thomas, Jesus says in
one text, "I am the all. Split a piece of wood on there, lift up a
stone and I am there." That's a quality of deity at the expense of his
humanity.